The Sweeper: Premier League looks to cash in on Asia

Big Story“Premier League looks to cash in on Asia” is the headline on another of those BBC news articles we seem to read several times a season about how Premier League teams “hope” to turn the apparent fervid support of Asian fans into many millions of pounds. This particular piece is about Singapore, and a schism over a paid TV deal that may turn off supporters, with a warning that they risk turning away “fans who are being asked to pay ever-higher prices to follow teams which play thousands of miles away.”

The same thing of course occurred in China just a couple of years ago, when the Premier League moved to pay tv and discovered their “product” wasn’t so unique that most wouldn’t be content to just watch the Italian or Spanish league, or the NBA, on free-to-air television instead. The Premier League had to intervene and put some games back on free tv.

So the hopes to cash in have yet to realise the road to riches promised. But what isn’t asked in this piece is whether the Premier League’s efforts benefits Asian football overall.

Lucrative pre-season tours take place each year, of course, rotating around whichever part of Asia is deemed to be the hottest forthcoming property. Premier League teams sometimes even say their visits are not about money, but about “developing the game”. Some teams do have charitable efforts and academies in various parts of Asia, to be sure.

So is it true that the Premier League’s expansion in Asia a crucial contribution to the sport’s development there, as Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore ? Is this the twenty-first century equivalent of British sailors, soldiers and industrialists bringing the sport to new ports in the late nineteenth century, and sowing the seeds for the game’s explosion in South America? Or are they merely sucking out money from the sport’s domestic development in Asia itself, which already has, after all, its own Champions League?

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The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Having travelled extensively in Asia in the last couple of years, the Premier League is certainly popular, but your post is apposite because my impression is that locals in the various countries I have visited see their own football as something of a joke in comparison. Certainly, Singapore’s S League isn’t taken seriously at all and the A League in Australia has in reality had little impact, judging by the still dominant foreign-based contingent in Europe.

What may change things could be economic progress in China and India in particular. I was struck by the large number of African players competing in Indian football these days. At the moment, they tend to be lesser known stars but as clubs grow and begin to wield financial clout, players will become tempted to go there. In the Nineties, we were forever told that Serie A was the gold standard among football leagues, now it’s the “EPL”. In ten years’ time, it could be the Russian or Turkish league; a decade later and it could be China. Scudamore and his ilk need to make hay while the sun shines.